Tag: innovate

A certain flock of geese lived together in a barnyard with high walls around it. Because the corn was good and the barnyard was secure, these geese learned to always do the same things over and over and to live orderly and predictable lives with no surprises. This primarily meant never take a risk or do anything new. Over time the geese became so lazy they even forgot how to fly. They were safe and secure in their barnyard where everything is familiar and nothing ever changes. In short, they always did what they always did and always got what they always got.

One day a philosopher goose came among them. He was a very good philosopher and every week they listened quietly and attentively to his learned discourses. “My fellow geese,” he would say, “can you seriously imagine that this barnyard, with great high walls around it, is all there is to existence? Don’t you realize you can fly and change the way you live? You were all born as spontaneous and natural fliers. All you need do is live the way you were meant to live and fly.” “I tell you, there is another and a greater world outside, a world of which you are only dimly aware.

Our forefathers knew of this outside world. For did they not stretch their wings and fly across the trackless wastes of desert and ocean, of green valley and wooded hill? But alas, here you remain in this barnyard, your wings folded and tucked into your sides, as you are content to puddle around in the mud, never lifting your eyes to the heavens which should be your home.”

The geese thought this was very fine lecturing. “How poetical,” they thought. “How profoundly existential. What a flawless summary of the mystery of existence.” Often the philosopher spoke of the advantages of flight, calling on the geese to get off their butts and fly. After all, they had wings, he pointed out. What were wings for, but to fly with?

The philosopher urged the geese to experience the joys of doing different things and looking at the world in a different way. “Fly,” he would say. “Don’t wait for divine inspiration. Inspiration will never come. Just do it. Get up and fly.” Often he reflected on the joys on controlling your own destiny in the freedom of the skies while you enjoyed the beauty and the wonder of life as they were born to do.

And every week the geese were uplifted, inspired, moved by the philosopher’s message. They hung on his every word. They devoted hours, weeks, and months to a thoroughgoing analysis and critical evaluation of his doctrines. They created computer models, charts and graphs displaying the physics and dynamics of flight. They produced learned treatises on the ethical and spiritual implications of flight. They held meetings and talked endlessly about the importance and need to fly. They all agreed that flying would make a much better life possible. All this they did. But one thing they never did. They did not fly! They were afraid of the uncertainty of living in a different way. For the corn was good, and the barnyard was secure!

Are You Like the Geese?

At one time Eastman Kodak was one of the premier companies in the world. The people who worked there were prosperous, had wonderful salaries, bonuses, comprehensive health and medical benefits, and superior pensions. Everybody was happy. It seemed like there was no end to its prosperity. Kodak advertised itself internationally as being a very creative and innovative company. They hired the top creative thinkers in the fields of photography and film. They came up with scores of brilliant ideas such as digital photography, and were among the first to design a digital photography camera.

They had all these cutting edge ideas years before their competition, but they implemented not a single one because of the fear of new ideas. Kodak clung to its aging familiar technology. They wanted to hang on to their historical revenue streams. They thought, “We know we’re making a lot of money with film. We don’t know if we’re going to make money with these new ideas. Let’s keep doing what we’ve always done.” Consequently, not one of these innovative ideas–not one–was accepted or implemented. It was an organization which could not transform itself by accepting and implementing new ideas. So the reality of the business world transformed Kodak from being a major player into a bankrupt shell.

Kodak CEOs and top managers feared the new ideas. They wanted to be absolutely certain everything would work flawlessly and the money would continue to flow, which, of course, is impossible to predict with new ideas. In the end, Kodak management behaved like the flock of geese in the barnyard and never did fly.

In the history of art, most people could easily argue that Salvador Dalí is the father of surrealistic art. Surrealism is the art of writing or painting unreal or unpredictable works of art using the images or words from an imaginary world. Dali’s art is the definition of surrealism. Throughout his art he clearly elaborates on juxtaposition (putting similar images near each other), the disposition (changing the shape of an object), and morphing of objects, ranging from melted objects dripping, to crutches holding distorted figures, to women with a heads of bouquets of flowers.

Dali was intrigued with the images which occur at the boundary between sleeping and waking. They can occur when people are falling asleep, or when they are starting to wake up, and they tend to be extremely vivid, colorful and bizarre. His favorite technique is that he would put a tin plate on the floor and then sit by a chair beside it, holding a spoon over the plate. He would then totally relax his body; sometimes he would begin to fall asleep. The moment that he began to doze the spoon would slip from his fingers and clang on the plate, immediately waking him to capture the surreal images.

The extraordinary images seem to appear from nowhere, but there is a logic. The unconscious is a living, moving stream of energy from which thoughts gradually rise to the conscious level and take on a definite form. Your unconscious is like a hydrant in the yard while your consciousness is like a faucet upstairs in the house. Once you know how to turn on the hydrant, a constant supply of images can flow freely from the faucet. These forms give rise to new thoughts as you interpret the strange conjunctions and chance combinations.

Surrealism is the stressing of subconscious or irrational significance of imagery, or in more simplistic terms, the use of dreamlike imagery. Dalí’s absurd imagination has him painting pictures of figures no person would even dream of creating. Following is a blueprint Dali’s technique.

BLUEPRINT

Think about your challenge. Consider your progress, your obstacles, your alternatives, and so on. Then push it away and relax.

Totally relax your body. Sit on a chair. Hold a spoon loosely in one of your hands over a plate. Try to achieve the deepest muscle relaxation you can.

Quiet your mind. Do not think of what went on during the day or your challenges and problems. Clear your mind of chatter.

Quiet your eyes. You cannot look for these images. Be passive. You need to achieve a total absence of any kind of voluntary attention. Become helpless and involuntary and directionless. You can enter the hypnogogic state this way, and, should you begin to fall asleep, you will drop the spoon and awaken in time to capture the images.

Record your experiences immediately after they occur. The images will be mixed and unexpected and will recede rapidly. They could be patterns, clouds of colors, or objects.

Look for the associative link. Write down the first things that occur to you after your experience. Look for links and connections to your challenge. Ask questions such as:

What puzzles me?

Is there any relationship to the challenge?

Any new insights? Messages?

What’s out of place?

What disturbs me?

What do the images remind me of?

What are the similarities?

What analogies can I make?

What associations can I make?

How do the images represent the solution to the problem?

A restaurant owner used this technique to inspire new promotion ideas. When the noise awakened him, he kept seeing giant neon images of different foods: neon ice cream, neon pickles, neon chips, neon coffee, and so on. The associative link he saw between the various foods and his challenge was to somehow to use the food itself as a promotion.

The idea: He offers various free food items according to the day of week, the time of day, and the season. For instance, he might offer free pickles on Monday, free ice cream between 2 and 4 P.M. on Tuesdays, free coffee on Wednesday nights, free sweet rolls on Friday mornings, free salads between 6 and 8 P.M. on Saturdays and so on. He advertises the free food items with neon signs, but you never know what food items are being offered free until you go into the restaurant. The sheer variety of free items and the intriguing way in which they are offered has made his restaurant a popular place to eat.

Another promotion he created as a result of seeing images of different foods is a frequent-eater program. Anyone who hosts five meals in a calendar month gets $30 worth of free meals. The minimum bill is $20 but he says the average is $30 a head. These two promotions have made him a success.

The images you summon up with this technique have an individual structure that may indicate an underlying idea or theme. Your unconscious mind is trying to communicate something specific to you, though it may not be immediately comprehensible. The images can be used as armatures on which to hang new relationships and associations.